


the zabini guide to surviving hogwarts

by kalesmay



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Friendship, Gen, M/M, idk what to tag this as it’s just black gay Blaise having a time and some depth for once, liberties with canon and characterization aka i gave tracey a personality and stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 10:05:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13831905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalesmay/pseuds/kalesmay
Summary: Blaise Zabini had better things to do than give a damn about the Wizarding War.





	the zabini guide to surviving hogwarts

**Author's Note:**

> i moved back into my hp hyperfixation and decided to stan blaise since jkr did literally nothing with him therefore i can do whatever i want. tumblr is @catmans!

The thing is, Blaise was over the wizarding war before it even started. Sure, he was Slytherin, and sure, he was — according to the truth his mother told — pureblood, but really, he had much better things to do than give a damn about Voldemort. It was just his rotten luck to befriend two of the more vehement pureblood supremacists, Draco and Pansy, but even that was mostly alright because he usually tuned them out anyway. When they weren’t talking about Harry bloody Potter and his friends, they were almost tolerable people, even if Pansy was irritatingly heterosexual and fawn-y over Draco; Blaise figured she’d grow out of it eventually.

What no one seemed to really understand was, this wasn’t his fight. Not really. He might have been a Slytherin pureblood, but the two of those things held very little weight to him, not that he would ever say so. His mother had wed and deathbed many men, some of which were pureblood, others halfblood, others still Muggleborn. The only common factor was their wealth and their handsomeness. Those were the traits Blaise had been taught to value, and so he did.

Harry Potter was owner of a small fortune, and he was decent looking, what with his tousled dark curls and vivid green eyes behind round spectacles, so he was okay in Blaise’s book. Of course, he would ever admit that to Draco, who seemed to be personally offended by every breath Harry took. It all seemed a bit overkill to him, but Pansy did what Draco did, and the rest of their little gang followed, so Blaise did too. Blaise had many unique, vaguely radical thoughts in his pretty head, but in all his years at Hogwarts, he had never voiced a single one. Risking his status for the sake of people who would never see him as anything but a Slytherin or a pureblood or a gay black boy was hardly something he was inclined to do. So, he didn’t. He went with the flow, which meant occasionally sneering at Potter’s pretty, bushy haired friend. He did as little damage as possible, but he supposed complacency wasn’t much better. Not much he could do about that; he hadn’t been sorted Gryffindor for a reason.

More frustrating than Potter and co.’s incessant adventuring and Dark Lord fighting — which was _incredibly_ frustrating, Blaise routinely blew exams because he’d been up writing letters to his mum about all the rubbish happening in the Hogwarts halls instead of studying — was Hogwarts’ glaring and offensive lack of anyone to date.

Blaise didn’t need to date anyone, and he also wasn’t sure he knew how; his only model on the act was his mother, who married men with dimples and broad shoulders and sparkling Gringotts vaults and buried them just the same, and Blaise didn’t think he wanted to do that. At least, not yet. But his mother always asked in her owls if he’d met any cute and wealthy young wizards, and frankly, he was tired of having to tell her no. His mother kept threatening to send a Howler that shouted out a plea to date her son, and the thought alone filled Blaise with a burning embarrassment.

He didn’t know why he couldn’t get a boyfriend. He was smart, and tall, and handsome, and well aware of all three facts. His mother, famous for more than just her many doomed betrothals, had passed along her rich dark skin, sharp cheekbones, full lips, and striking brown eyes. A great deal of value had been placed on appearances in the Zabini household, and Blaise took great care to keep them up. The combination of arrogance and detached mystery that his mother had cultivated in him early on was aces at getting girls to bat their eyes at him across the common room, but never cute ones, and never blokes. It was rather depressing.

At some point during his fifth year, he’d considered Draco, as someone with a wealthy family and an almost pretty face (if you were into thin, sickly looking white boys, which Blaise really wasn’t), but then Draco began licking Umbridge’s boots like some kind of fanatical lapdog, and Blaise had crossed that off nearly as soon as it had come up. He may have followed the crowd, but he did so with an attractive, skeptical aloofness that looked much better than Draco’s little desperate dog routine. Mostly, Blaise just hated Umbridge with a passion, because she insisted upon calling him boy and eyeing him suspiciously whenever he passed by trophy cases. He detested racists. This often included Draco and Pansy, simply because they’d been raised that way. Much like their aggressive heterosexuality, he assumed they’d mature past it at some point. Didn’t mean he liked hearing it, though. Wizards didn’t care half as much about race as Muggles did, which was one reason Blaise wasn’t overly fond of them, but prejudices beyond blood still existed, much to his displeasure.

His mother, born with the dark skin and elegant accent of Ethiopian royalty, had come to Britain for the wealth and the gullible men, and stayed for her son. Of all her lessons (which there were a great deal), the one she had stressed most was what Blaise’s skin meant. His hair and his nose would be a target of ridicule, a point of oppression, something people would look at and classify as other. It wouldn’t always be seen as a good thing, she told him, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t. The Zabini’s were beautiful, she said, descended from the royal family of Ethiopia and a longer line of African witches, and anyone who would dare to say otherwise were their enemy. At 17, Blaise didn’t really care to have enemies, but he learned he was beautiful because of his skin, and not in spite of it, and when he began attending Hogwarts, he made sure everyone else knew it, too.

Blaise was more than capable of thinking for himself, and realizing that some things mattered more than House. It was that force that allowed him to make exasperated eye contact with a dark skinned Ravenclaw girl in his Charms class whenever Draco started in on how a girl like Hermione managed to ace all her classes; Draco’s main theory, of course, was cheating.

“What do you mean, ‘a girl like her’?” Blaise said, testily. His passiveness only extended so far, and Draco had been pushing his buttons all week.

Draco blinked and fidgeted a little in his seat, sharing a look with an equally startled Pansy. Across the room, the Ravenclaw smiled down at her desk. “I just meant that coming from a family like hers, there mustn’t be many opportunities for learning. My father says all her type do is crime.” He looked rather certain of the _facts_ Lucius Malfoy had bestowed upon him, and Blaise felt his brow quirk lazily.

“Mudbloods? Or black people?” Very rarely did Blaise feel the need to display his backbone, but he wanted everyone to be crystal clear on where he drew the line.

“W-well,” Draco stammered, looking a little baffled at the sudden and unexpected appearance of Blaise’s moral fiber. “I’m just saying what my father said.” Pansy looked on sourly.

Blaise graced his friend with his most winning smile, slow and dangerous, eyes half lidded. “Next time, keep it to yourself. Daddy doesn’t always know best.” Merlin, Blaise really couldn’t stand Lucius Malfoy. Draco awkwardly turned his attention back to his Charms assignment, quiet the rest of class — just the way Blaise liked him, when he acted like that. Pansy did what Draco did, so she, too, fell silent. Feeling accomplished, Blaise winked at the Ravenclaw, who bared white teeth in a grin, a little gap between the front two. If things were different, Blaise thought he could’ve been her friend, but she was Ravenclaw and Muggleborn, and so he would settle for keeping Slytherins off her back whenever possible.

He learned to excel in that: deflection, protection, distraction. In his bored drawl, he would cut his eyes towards that days victim and will them away, shifting his body to put a wall between them and Draco’s gang as he raised his voice to point out something across the hall. Picking on others had never sat right with him; his mother taught him to ignore those below you, not ridicule them. The energy Millicent Bulstrode wasted on bullying could have just as easily been spent charming away her unibrow, but of course the thought never occurred to people like her. She looked rather like a bullfrog, so Blaise was careful not to associate with her.

It wasn’t _all_ Slytherins, of course. Only Gryffindors thought that. There were Slytherins who walked with Hufflepuffs across the grounds and who snogged Ravenclaws in the halls. A green tie didn’t mean pure blood fanatic, but try telling that to the rest of Hogwarts. Some Slytherin were just louder than others, or maybe they just had more to say.

Pretending to give a damn about blood status was the most difficult thing he and his mother did. Beautiful, wealthy, pure blooded, it was what was expected of them, and far be it from them to disappoint. Going against the grain meant risking losing the empire his mother had so painstakingly built for them. Ms. Zabini was not dull, however. Very calculatingly, like the Slytherin she had been in her own time, she selected husbands. They were always unpleasant men with more money than human decency, and they always ended up dead. Blaise heard from an aunt that the only man who survived the whirlwind of Amara Zabini was his father, gone off to who knows where now. Maybe he had been the only one she actually loved, or the only one who gave her something more than Galleons. Either way, his mother never told and he never asked. He didn’t see a need. Things were just fine without him, and Blaise never felt the absence of a father.

The day after the incident in Charms, Blaise was caught in a rare moment of genuine surprise when he felt a presence in front of his seat in the library, and looked up to find Hermione Granger herself looking at him like he was a puzzle she couldn’t solve. Blaise raised his left eyebrow, glancing up from his book but not closing it.

“Do you need something, Granger?” He used his very coldest voice, and to her credit, Hermione didn’t even flinch. Her warm eyes bored into his, hair exploding from her scalp in wild, dark curls.

She crossed her arms, then crossed them again. “I just...wanted to thank you.” It came out in quite a rush, only audible to Blaise because he’d guessed what she was going to say before she had. “You didn’t have to stand up for me, but you did.”

Blaise studied her for a minute, scanning her determined face, the dimple of her furrowed brow, and shrugged. “Okay. You’re welcome.” He pointedly went back to his book. Hermione, to his great displeasure, didn’t move.

“That’s it?” She sounded disappointed.

“Sorry, did you _want_ me to hex you and call you a mudblood?”

“Well, _no_ , but I still figured you might.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “You’re not like them, are you? Why do you put up with them?”

Unused to and unhappy about a stranger being able to read him so easily, Blaise snorted and scowled attractively. “What else could I possibly do? Now shove off, before someone sees you over here and I _have_ to hex you.”

She listened this time, giving him one more troubled look before exiting the library, leaving Blaise to frown deeply at his book on Wizarding fashion.

Later, when Blaise entered the common room, Draco gave him a long look before laughing at Goyle and proceeding to win the game of chess. It would be a cold day in Hell that Goyle beat _anyone_ in chess, let alone someone as clever as Malfoy. He and Crabbe were decidedly on the brawny end of the spectrum, and as Draco was sorely lacking in that regard, he was all brain. Blaise took a seat on one of the elegant couches, sinking graciously into the cushion beside a pretty fifth year named Tracey Davis, offering her the barest of smiles. She blushed under her olive skin, tucking an auburn curl behind her ear and smiling back much more enthusiastically. Her green eyes never fell from his face, even when he turned towards the fireplace, so he regarded her quizzically.

“Something the matter?” Not that he objected to being admired, but he felt like he should ask, in case he had an errant crumb on his face or something else unbecoming.

Tracey shook her head, a little sheepish. “ _No!_ No, not at all, just...you’re gay, right?” It wasn’t exactly a secret, because he wasn’t ashamed, but he had no desire to shout it from the Astronomy Tower, so he was internally endeared by her hushed voice.

He narrowed his eyes. “Yes, is that a problem?”

“No!” Tracey squeaked, loud and abrupt enough that others in the common room looked up. She didn’t speak again until all the eyes on them once again fell away. “No,” she repeated, fiercely. “I am, too.” It looked like the first time she had ever said it out loud. Blaise found himself smiling, wider and more genuine than he had in a very long time.

“Well then,” he said, slinging a casual arm around her shoulders in a very uncharacteristic move, “perhaps we ought to stick together.” Tracey giggled under his arm, and Pansy glared at them from across the common room. He grinned right back.

Later that night, as he changed into the emerald green silk pajama set that his mother owled him, Draco hissed his name. Blaise, far too dignified to do something idiotic like jump, turned slowly. “Saw you were talking with Granger, in the library.” He whispered, mindful of the rest of the boys in varying states of slumber around the dorm. Blaise, who really just wanted to curl up on his Egyptian cotton sheets and go to sleep, swallowed a yawn.

“And?”

“Nothing, nothing. You just seemed rather cordial, don’t want you forgetting who you are.”

Blaise frowned at the boy, who looked sallow in the dim light. Damn Draco and his infuriatingly unwavering misplaced boldness, courteous of Lucius Malfoy, no doubt. “Did you want me to hex her in the middle of the bloody library? Perhaps _you_ should remember who _you_ are. My mother ruins men like your father every Thursday.” Striding away, quite over the whole conversation, he said, “I will talk to whoever I please. Forget that, and I’ll tell everyone about the time you snogged me like a dead fish in the Restricted Section.” Feeling confident in the fact that his mother would be proud of him, Blaise yawned and got into his own bed, yanking his curtains shut on Draco’s idiotic face.

The thing was, he would never tell anyone about that dreadful snog Draco had bestowed upon him after Pansy called him a spineless twat in the middle of Potions, mostly because it looked worse on Blaise’s taste than anything else. The other thing was that Draco didn’t _mean_ to be an absolutely infuriating tosser, he just wasn’t used to not getting his way. He’d feel bad later, but he wouldn’t apologize, and neither would Blaise —Draco would slide him an extra Danish at breakfast, Blaise would eat it, and that would be that. You didn’t have friends like Draco if communication was a necessity. Blaise, who personally liked people knowing as little as possible about any and all things relating to him, was more than fine with never speaking about his feelings or life at all. His mystery was half his allure. Perhaps he could make an exception for the bright eyed fifth year who seemed determined to become his friend, however. The more he talked to Tracey, the more he found himself enjoying her company, her pleasant smiles and kind hearted questions.

When he woke up — after everyone else had already left for breakfast because his mother had instilled a value of beauty sleep in him at a young age — Blaise put on his school clothes sleepily, brushing his teeth and putting the delicate gold hoop his mother gave him in his left ear. He considered skipping breakfast all together. Sketching in the green light of the torches seemed very appealing, but when Blaise stepped into the common room, he stopped short.

On the couch, sitting stiffly, was Draco Malfoy. He looked tired and bored, but determined, and Blaise cleared his throat. Draco stood up awkwardly.

“Everyone else went ahead to breakfast,” he said haltingly. Blaise bit back a smile.

“But you stayed.”

“I wanted to wait for you.” Draco’s pale hands twisted together, and Blaise was reminded why he had fancied him, all that time ago.

Blaise’s eyes crinkled at the corners, and Draco visibly relaxed at the sign of forgiveness. “Thank you.” They exited the common room together, close enough that their hands brushed, and Blaise bumped their shoulders. “You know, I’d never tell anyone about the time we snogged.”

Draco hummed and smiled brightly enough that it was unfamiliar on the drawn face of the boy who was no longer a first year, bumping Blaise right back. “I wouldn’t care if you did.” Blaise was almost grateful for the swell of noise as they entered the Great Hall, preventing him from saying whatever embarrassingly smitten response he would certainly have said otherwise. It was a shame that Draco’s father had raised him with such domineering ideas, because when he was like this, laughing and open, elbowing some third year jokingly, Blaise could almost love him; or at least, he could remember why he became friends with him in the first place.

Contrary to popular belief, Draco wasn’t _all_ bad. He had a tendency to be nasty and his beliefs even nastier, but Blaise knew he was capable of so much more. Hopefully not naively, Blaise coveted a future for Draco where he didn’t feel the need to overcompensate and impress his father, one where he didn’t belittle those around him to feel like he mattered. One day, Merlin willing, Draco would realize he was. Until then, though, Blaise would settle for rare smiles across the table. Neither of them were capable of anything more.

Draco slid him a Danish. Blaise ate it.

•••

When the Battle of Hogwarts started, it was unlike anything Blaise had ever seen. It was Pansy who set the whole rotten thing in motion, and Blaise was momentarily so disgusted that he considered drawing his own wand on his friend. But, they were Slytherin, and they had never been taught anything else. The only way to keep yourself alive was to put yourself first, and no one wanted to be saved by a Slytherin anyway. So, they ran. Professor Mcgonagall urged the Slytherins to leave, and many abided without complaint. A few stayed. Blaise was almost one of them.

He thought about fighting. He thought about dying. He thought about the way his mother's beautiful face would crumple at the sight of his dead one, and so he left. Staying alive was his priority, but that didn’t mean he was content with the Death Eaters wreaking havoc upon the school he grew up in, where he had learned and ate and slept, and the people he had done it with. Blaise looked around at the crowd of escaping Slytherins, and didn’t see Tracey anywhere. He swore, slipping his wand out of his sleeve. Playing the hero was Potter’s gig — and Blaise had no doubt he would save the day again — but Blaise had people, too.

Cursing himself mentally, Blaise headed back to the castle, jostling his house mates out of the way. They all gave him suitably incredulous looks, which Blaise more than deserved, but the image of Tracey splayed out dead was enough to spur him on. Staying hidden, Blaise cursed every Death Eater he saw on the grounds, willing Tracey to appear. Because nothing in his life was easy anymore, she didn’t. He did see Professor Slughorn leading a pack of very scared and very angry Slytherins right back into the battle, and Blaise joined their ranks, losing himself in a swarm of black and green robes.

“Have you seen Tracey?” He frantically asked the bellowing third year beside him, who was far too young to fight in a war if you asked Blaise. Nobody had.

“Who?” The kid replied, and darted off to hex a Death Eater. Blaise kept running.

He had hoped being a Slytherin would keep a target off of his back, seeing as he wasn’t actually fighting, but it seemed as if the Death Eaters saw everyone not in masks and robes as an opponent. Blaise dodged a few curses, taking a misguided Jelly Leg hex from a frazzled Hufflepuff. “Sorry!” They yelped, ducking under a Crucio curse. Blaise ground out the counterspell, and resumed his search. He finally found her, locked in a heated duel at the end of the Great Hall. Really, he should’ve left when he could. Too late now. Tracey was managing to hold her own, but Blaise had no clue how long she could keep it up, and he was far from willing to make chances.

With a grunt, Blaise launched himself at the Death Eater, knocking the wand out of his hand. Tracey staggered back, hair and eyes wild. “Blaise!”

“Get out of here! _Go_!” He rolled away from the Death Eater, whipping out his own wand and aiming a Stupefy that hit the statue behind him. Damn.

Tracey shook her head, raising her wand. “You came back for me. I won’t leave you.” She said firmly, blocking a curse.

The Death Eater sneered, having finally gotten to his feet. “Touching. At least you’ll die in the company of friends.”

Blaise was very determined to not die. “Stupefy!”

“Protego!” The robed man cackled. Tracey grit her teeth. She wasn’t dying, either. Not if Blaise had anything to say about it.

She flicked her wand again. “Incarcerous!” This time, the Death Eater wasn’t so lucky, and he went down in cords of thick rope. Tracey crowed. “Blaise, now!”

Education at Hogwarts had never prepared him for anything more serious than turning a sofa into a hippopotamus, and Blaise wasn’t sure of the etiquette for dueling, but this was not a situation to be taken lightly, and so he did not. “Avada Kedavra!” A bolt of green light hit the Death Eater solidly in his writhing chest, and he fell limp at once.

Tracey turned to him, weary and disbelieving. “A killing curse?”

Blaise shrugged helplessly. “I panicked! Can we get out of here now?” He had accomplished what he set out to, he had done his part, and had no inclination to further press his luck. Tracey, a much better person than him but still a Slytherin, nodded and took his offered arm, running through the halls. It seemed the action was slowing, shifting, and Blaise tripped over more than one fallen classmate. Beside him, Tracey sobbed raggedly.

The pair of them made it outside, carefully navigating their way around the mass of people. Unsurprisingly, Harry Potter was in the middle of a showdown with Voldemort, one that Blaise just had to assume he would win. He hadn’t the time or the strength for anything else. As he pulled Tracey behind a stone pillar to hide, he noticed something else — Draco, standing among the Hogwarts students. Blaise made a small noise of shock; he knew, of course, that Draco hadn’t had the stomach or the heart for it, but he didn’t expect Draco to figure it out so soon. He had never been cut out for all that Dark Magic rubbish anyway. Draco’s mother Narcissa, a pretty, severe woman, stood off to the side, aligned with no one. She had eyes only for her son. The Malfoys looked smaller than Blaise had ever seen them, but somehow larger, too.

Almost as quickly as it had begun, it was over. Harry Potter had once again vanquished the Dark Lord, and mostly unintentionally. Even Blaise had to be impressed by his dumb luck. He helped Tracey to her feet. “Maybe we do have a bit of Gryffindor in us after all.” She cracked, looking around at the spots of green in the sea of students, milling around to celebrate their victory and survey their dead. He noticed Potter didn’t look as happy as someone who saved the Wizarding World ought to, and Blaise wondered if some of the dead inside belonged to him. Draco stood quietly with his mother.

Blaise shook his head. “No. They don’t always get to be the heroes. We’re Slytherins, Tracey, and this time it was us, too.”

Tracey looked at him, eyes shining. “I reckon you’re right. C’mon, let’s go inside.” He really wanted to just Apparate home, to the arms of his mother that kept no one safe but him, but he nodded, still reeling, and followed her back into Hogwarts.

The time after the Battle passed in a blur, spent watching others cry and cheer in equal measure. They had won, but at the cost of students and teachers and brothers and sisters. Blaise tried not to dwell on it.

There was no point in finishing the year; in the following week, all the students packed their things to go home, some of them for the very last time. Draco approached Blaise in the dormitory.

“Heard you came back.”

Blaise folded his robes. “You, too.”

Draco shifted awkwardly. “Yeah, I guess so,” He paused for a moment. “Dad’s in Azkaban. I think mum’s glad.” There wasn’t really anything to say to that, so Blaise didn’t try. “I know I was awful, all these years.” Blaise hummed noncommittally. Draco took this for the agreement Blaise intended it to be. “Now that dad’s gone, I think I can learn how to be...different. Mum, too.”

“I believe that,” Blaise said, and he did, he always had. “Owl me when you figure it out, Malfoy.” He squeezed Draco’s hand on the way out of the common room. Tracey was waiting for him in the common room, trunk already floating beside her.

“Nice of your mum to invite me to spend the summer with you,” Tracey’s excitement was infectious. Blaise snorted. “She’s promised to teach me how to get girls to fancy me!” she continued.

At that, Blaise laughed out loud. “Don’t listen to a bloody word she says.” He gave the Slytherin common room one last look, and lead the way out of the dungeons.

Blaise Zabini didn’t look back.

 


End file.
